The casual cuddling session of Gloom and 99158 at the base of High Score’s statue is eventually interrupted by the soft grinding of the High Score Cavern’s main door sliding along its rails and letting in what looks like a heavily breathing hybrid of a drone and a trash heap. 99158 shuffles and twists in Gloom’s embrace and she lets the drone go before standing up herself.

“Need help?” asks 99158 immediately.

The overloaded drone shakes its head, lowers itself with a strained grunt, and lets the pile on its back slide off, revealing the rest of itself. Even Gloom can now easily recognize the drone wearing a protective cloak made from brown-ish grey scales.

“Heya, explorer guy!” she smiles at 99200, “What’s all that?”

The drone takes a couple moments to catch its breath, and eventually says:

“Rumbler scales. I got a whole bunch this time because something had finished eating the rumbler from the inside already and I couldn’t hear anything moving anymore. 99856 is bound to be boom-proof with this many… if I figure out how to fit them together.”

Before Gloom can say anything, both drones’ heads perk up, their small ears twitching, and 99158 bolts towards the entrance.

“What’s going on?” she asks, watching the drone pick several green resin objects from a set of alcoves right by the door which are too well sorted to be just a random drone’s stash.

“A response team alarm,” explains 99200, “From what I’m hearing, it’s a cave-in. Someone just has to dig 99687 out and 99158 will be there in case gribblers come out to check the area. A cave-in means things are moving, and moving things can be tasty.”

“Shouldn’t you help?”

“No,” 99158 replies this time, busy with shoving the green objects into various holes in the legs and hollow places of its carapace.

“I’m used to working alone and hiding a lot. I don’t have the group training that 99158, 99112, and 99911 have, and-” explains 99200 while 99158 rushes out of the HSC, “-some of the equipment the response team has is so rare no one else has the experience using it. If I threw some of it too far, too late, or not far enough, I could kill everyone.”

“Ah yes, the old ‘thou shalt count to three, no more, no less’,” Gloom nods, “I get it, I have some gear that lower ranked Nightguards can’t use either, and I know how bad things can get with a rookie on the team.”

After all, we took 65536 on a dreamscape mission with us only weeks after it landed in Luna’s room in the wake of the Canterlot invasion.

“I must admit I didn’t know you guys reached this level of specialization. In retrospect, I don’t know why I didn’t realize it from all I heard. I must have just thought of you as the same cute little drones, just with different interests,” she continues.

Not knowing what to say, 99200 only nods and starts fiddling with the pile of scales which are each about as big as the drone itself.

“Say, 65536 said these rumblers were the biggest threat to the hive as a whole, mainly due to being near-invulnerable. Can I take a look at one of the scales?”

“Sure,” 99200 nods and pauses what it’s doing when Gloom takes a knife from a sheath by her saddlebag and tries to scratch the scale, leaving only a faint impression on its surface. It grows way more interested when the bat pony raises her hoof, three dark blue and flickering, ethereal blades slide out of her horseshoe, and she rams them through the scale itself. When she pulls them out and they fade into nothingness again, three more marks remain at the point of contact, all slightly more prominent than the one left by the knife, but there are no holes left behind either. The only big difference is Gloom suddenly being short on breath as if she just had to gallop a hundred pony lengths.

“Wow, that is hard,” she flicks her head to get the mane out of her eyes, “How do you-”

With a flash of emerald fire, 99200 grows a short, green-shimmering blade out of its hoof and easily cuts through the scale with no resistance.

“How do I what?” it asks.

“Nevermind,” Gloom shakes her head, picks the knife up to return it to the sheath. The battery crystals clink in the saddlebag and she mutters to herself, “Huh, I completely forgot. I have the recharged batteries for you.”

“Gasp! Really?!” 99200’s jaw drop.

“Yup, give me a moment. I’ll put them in and check if the radio works.”

“The guys will be so happy!”

“I hope so,” Gloom trots up the stairs leading to the top one of the three levels of balconies, and walks along to the middle point where 99200 showed her the radio yesterday. She pulls it out of its alcove, opens a panel in the back, and slots the crystals in. With a push of the power button, the radio starts quietly hissing, and no amount of turning the tuning knob makes it catch any signal. Gloom leans over the railing and calls down, “Hey, the radio has power, but I can’t tune into anything.”

“The antenna thingy isn’t raised!” 99200 calls back.

“Can I do that on my end?”

Or perhaps, does 57999 make thingyraiser pills for that- no bad Gloom!

“We’re supposed to only do that right before breaky time because the Queen doesn’t want us to show where we live.”

Gloom nods, puts the radio back, and returns to 99200 who is carefully separating the large rumbler scales into small squares similar to the scales of its own cloak.

As if a huge, black pile in the middle of the Badlands wasn’t enough of a clue.

“200?”

“Where?” 99200 immediately looks around.

“You.”

“I’m not 200, I’m 99200,” the drone shoots Gloom a puzzled glance.

“I know, it’s just kinda of difficult to remember and say for ponies.”

“Huh…” it raises an eyebrow, “Okay, what do you need?”

“I think I need to talk to the villain guy,” Gloom gives her mission another shot, just in case 99200 knows a way to get down there that’s safer, “I’ve been told it’s down in the Guide’s Cavern and it’ll be there for the next few shifts too.”

“That’s not a good idea,” 99200 shakes its head, “It’s hard to breathe down there, you often need to flee using a specific path both from collapsing tunnels and weird gribblers and that’s impossible to do without the hive mind map and communication with other drones. And-” when 99200 measures her from head to hooves just like 99158 did, Gloom sighs.

“-and I wouldn’t fit through the only access path, right?”

“You could squeeze through, I think, you ponies are squishy. It wouldn’t be comfortable, though, and you might get stuck, in which case… honestly, I wouldn’t know what to do. We might not be able to dig you out. Do you want me to ask 99818 if it can make it up here for breaky time?”

“Would you?”

Unfortunately, 99200’s moment of concentration ends with the drone shaking its head and saying:

“99818 says it can’t do that because hot-glowy keeps melting access paths to the evil lair and leaving it before figuring out a stable blueprint would set the project back too much.”

“Oh well, I had to try,” Gloom shrugs, “With that plan on the back burner, could you show me the way to the greenhouse? 99158 said you knew the way.”

“I’d love to, but I really need to process the scales. I’m really sorry,” 99200 shakes its head, cutting the large scale non-stop, “99856 is refusing to rest at the node point even thought it got hurt really badly during its last boomy experiment and could barely walk for days,” it shudders, “Before that, some kind of a new melty made its muzzle drip blood so much it could barely breathe. I want to make it a cloak just like I have which it can use to protect itself from all the melty splatter that happens during testing, and try to figure out how to put scales on a muzzle mask like I use. It won’t do much good against the boomies, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Hmmm, no cloak will be useful against explosions, you need a solid and padded object for that, buuut…” Gloom automatically tries to help, “Ah hah! What if I helped you make an armor for 99856 that would be both resistant to liquid acid and corrosive gas, plus almost entirely blast-proof as well?”

“Wha- hah- huuh?” 99200 stops, looks at her, and tilts its head in disbelief, “That sounds too good to be true.”

“Okay, I may be overselling it with the gas resistance, but if your scales can block acid and if you can get more spider webs that your cloak is made of-” she softly rubs the underside of 99200’s cloak, “-I can show you a design for a proper padded splint mail, and I’m sure we can figure out how to make a fitting helmet together. Take me to the greenhouse today and I’ll spend a whole tomorrow working on it, or more if it takes longer. My full, undivided attention.”

99200 bites its lip, doing the mental arithmetic of advantages and disadvantages. Every worky time, every experiment is another chance of 99856 hurting itself. It could very likely finish the cloak today, but it’s as Gloom said - the cloak itself wouldn’t offer much protection against explosions. The possibility of Gloom lying about knowing how to make a proper armor never even crosses its mind because she has a solid reputation based on 65536’s stories, but mostly because 99200 is a drone, and lying… simply isn’t a thing in a world where any high rank can read your mind.

“Alright, let’s go. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can help 99856,” it nods and loads part of its pile back on its back, “I’ll just stash this away.”

“Let me help,” Gloom grabs two huge scales still connected by a strip of dry flesh and trots along. Unlike a drone, she can’t simply glue a pile of stuff to her back, so her carrying capacity is limited. 99200’s stash is in the bottom row so that the explorer can safely bring various knicknacks without worrying about space or having to fly with cargo, and 99200 just leaves the scales on the floor. Realizing that her help is mostly just symbolic, Gloom examines the Scufflestick set inside the alcove and gets an idea when she sees that it’s even more creatively customized and varied than the one she borrowed yesterday despite not being of as good quality. A quiet explorer would know what lurks around the best. How to ask the question without alerting it, though? “I wonder, 99200, is there a gribbler unit in Scufflestick based on something that’s invisible or reflective, very quick, and of about my size?”

“Hmmmm,” the drone shakes its head as it checks the hive mind unit list, “Nope. There are many gribblers that wait in ambush, but nothing I can think of that you couldn’t see up close. Most of the hard to see ones aren’t that great at running either.”

Gloom wasn’t expecting a clear answer, so she isn’t particularly disappointed, and it’s a good thing the drone isn’t asking for any kind of clarification.

“Thanks,” it pats 99200 as it brings the final batch, “Ready to go?”

“Yep, my worky time is pretty much empty, because I got 10k’s planning job, but 10k already planned over a week in advance, so I’m free to explore or help you.”

“Perhaps 10k knew I was coming, and arranged a free schedule for you exactly for that reason.”

“Huuuuh!” 99200’s mind - blown, “The veterans are so smart…”

Gloom scoops the explorer onto her back.

“Since we’re a bit tight on time, how about I carry you and you navigate? Are there any particularly dangerous places on the way?”

99200 shakes its head.

“The tunnel is direct, comfortably big enough for you, and not deep. Plus, it’s the only place that’s always patrolled by a high rank.”

***

The first movement in the guest cave comes around two hours after Gloom’s departure, and it’s a low moan from the disheveled purple alicorn waking up glued to her bedroll with a string of drool. Used to sleeping by a window, Twilight’s internal clock is controlled by the rising of the sun, so without any external hints she could have slept and slept and slept. That is, if it was in a real bed and not on a fairly thin layer of cloth between her and a solid stone floor.

“Ughh…” she wipes her mouth, rubs her eyes, and sits up. Her body protests after sleeping for so long on a hard surface, “Owww…”

The see-through, flickering, orange ball hovering in the center of the room is emitting little to no heat at this point, but serves well to wake up Twilight’s analytical mind with the sense of victory. She fires up her magic again, controlling the unstable flow that’s switching from resisting her and dampening the spell to empowering it to dangerous levels in the next instant, and lights up her horn so that she can have a look around. Gloom is missing and so are the recharged batteries, so she checks her watch and smiles.

I didn’t wake up in time to tell Gloom the plan for today. On the other hoof, my heat spell did last the entire night. It’s the simplest one next to light in my repertoire, but small victories are still progress.

She stretches with the loud cracking of bones filling the small cave, grateful for all the wilderness adventures with her friends that made her used to sleeping on the ground.

Speaking of - what IS the plan for today?

Her eyes fall on the ruined metal frame for the scrying cube and the pile of partially melted wires on her workbench.

Riiight…

Starting things slow by simply observing the subjects is out of the question for now, and Gloom already tainted the results anyway. Although… maybe not? Every basic observation method starts with introducing new variables into the environment of the subjects. Perhaps Gloom could be that variable. With the scrying crystals in place and correct guidance, I can still avoid revealing my involvement. After all, it’s likely that the drones already know that there’s more than one pony visiting the hive, but as long as I’m not being out in the open that knowledge means nothing. It also means that there shouldn’t be a big problem if I visit the drone gathering place which Gloom discovered only to talk to her. She’s bound to be there.

Happily humming to herself after solving her scientific conundrum, Twilight prepares the basic necessities for her excursion and leaves the cave.

“Slept well, Princess?” says a buzzing voice right next to her ear just as she clears the entrance.

“YAAAH?!” Twilight jumps into the other side of the tunnel and turns around, her breathing as quick and frantic as the sudden beating of her heart.

“I’m sorry,” the changeling backs away, “It’s me, 3012. I led you through the Badlands.”

“Yes- I- I remember you,” Twilight’s breathing slows down, “I’m just not good… with jumpscares.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” 3012 says in an apologetic tone, “It didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t know that I was here. We usually know if there’s another changeling around, at least vaguely.”

Finally calmed down, Twilight’s analytical side takes charge.

“How many changelings are around anyway? I recall only seeing you, 2119, the Queen, and her… assistant?”

“There are close to five hundred drones. Despite having stabilized and not losing too many too often, the number still fluctuates too much to keep an accurate count. As for the number of ranked changelings, I’m specifically not allowed to tell you. Queen’s orders.”

“A matter of security, I get it,” Twilight rolls her eyes. Of course Chrysalis is doing it just to mess with her. Thankfully, it’s not particularly relevant to her research at the moment. The exchange trip was to study drones, so it’s the drones whom she will study, “Say, I would like to have a look around undisturbed. My assistant managed to map a section of the hive yesterday and I want to check if my map works well enough for my purposes. Am I allowed to walk around on my own?”

“Yes, you are,” 3012 nods, “I’m supposed to stay here today so feel free to ask if you want my assistance.”

“Thank you for the offer,” Twilight smiles, her backpack opens, and the magical map floats up to her face, enveloped in the purple shimmer of the magic of her horn, “Oookay, the compass doesn’t work, neither does scrolling and changing depth levels. Zooms out a little, which is better but-”

3012 just watches, puzzled, as the alicorn walks off without looking up from the folded piece of paper a single time, quietly muttering to herself inside her own little world.

***

Several minutes later, Twilight stops adjusting the flow of magic with a sigh. The enchanted paper simply doesn’t allow enough flexibility to repair the map into a fully working state. If she had the right tools, she could create a new map now that she knows a little better how the flow of magic works here, but alas.

She checks the map again to confirm that a good chunk of the mapped path leads straight ahead, and sends it flying back to her saddlebag.

“Alright, Twilight, time to get to work,” she says out loud, just to do something about the complete silence penetrated only by her hoofsteps and breathing.

A brief check of the tunnel itself makes her let out an impressed hum.

“Anti-slip floors,” she runs her hoof along the nubs dotting the ground, “The walls are narrowing upwards for greater stability. Most importantly, though, everything is smooth and polished to perfection even though it’s solid rock. No technology that ponies or griffons have can achieve this without digging a hole and laying an artificial tunnel made from stone or concrete slabs into it. How was this made?”

A close-up scrutiny of a random section of wall reveals that there are imperfections, after all, and Twilight immediately pulls out a magnifying glass and starts examining the narrow scratches, hoping to reveal the method of carving this tunnel. Thankfully, her light spell is stable enough for her to make it brighter.

“Magic might be more convenient, but good, old technology simply doesn’t f-” her magnifying glass falls to the ground and she recovers before it makes contact with the solid rock.

This time, it wasn’t her magic failing, but her mind.

“Impossible…” she whispers, now examining lines and lines of the scratches, “These aren’t material fractures, this is all writing! How was any of this made?!”

Twilight has seen ancient temples and numerous archeological dig sites in her admittedly short but packed lifetime, but the laser-focused, deep grooves she’s reading now are something entirely unique.

“Is this some kind of changeling script? Why is it vaguely familiar, yet I’m sure I can’t read it? A cipher that I read a long time ago or something?”

Eventually it clicks with the strength of an exploding volcano, leaving Twilight too stunned to do anything other than stare at the wall with her jaw dropped.

“Silversmith script?” she groans, her head still not computing as her body takes charge and almost automatically begins following the writing on the wall, “No… not just that. Mathematical equations in ponish notation mixed with Silversmith script!” she repeats, following the paragraphs of symbols, “What is the biggest secret of world history doing here? Are changelings and Silversmiths connected?”

She stops to take a deep breath.

“Calm down, Twilight. You’re not following the data, you’ve come to a conclusion and are trying to bend the data to fit,” she sits down to examine the writing near the floor, “This place is too close to the surface to be a Silversmith ruin, and they didn’t build from stone, but from istrium. No one knows how to make it, where to mine it, or what it really is. This is not istrium, this is granite. This is also just Silversmith script, not their writing style. So, what does the data say right now, without spending months on trying to translate some of this?” she waves her foreleg deeper into the tunnel, “Ponish notation and script mixed with Silversmith alphabet. A mix of cultures, maybe?” she gasps, “Could there be a Silversmith ruin underneath the hive, maybe even an actual city?”

Standing back up, she levitates a clean sheet of paper out of her saddlebag, presses it against the wall, and summons her magic.

“Samples first.”

Light from her horn passes up and down through the sheet, and Twilight examines the result.

“Ffffffffff- fine, this is fine,” she scowls at the grainy, staticky grey surface of the paper showing precisely zero amount of the content of the wall that it’s supposed to, “Just a minor setback. The wall isn’t going anywhere, and I can always negotiate a trip for a team of archeologists now that the lines of communication are open. Besides, let’s apply Occamare’s razor here - if changelings wrote this, changelings will be able to read it.”

With that conclusion. Twilight returns to 3012 who is patiently standing on guard by the empty guest cave.

“Say, 3012, can you read the writing on the wall?”

“Parts of it, yes,” the warrior nods, “It’s a mix of random drone ‘scribbles’ of things they found useful but not necessary to keep inside the hive mind and something the Queen ordered drones to write down. I was told that only the drones need to be able to read the contents, and that no ranked changelings with the exception of the Queen and 156 can do it. Something to do with the balance of powers in the hive and giving drones some leverage.”

“Thank you,” Twilight doesn’t know what more to say, but it feels like 3012 isn’t expecting anything himself, so she just nods and leaves again.

Looks like I have one more reason to visit the drone cavern today.

***

The square door made of green resin dotted with grey spots is enough of a clue for Twilight that she’s found the right place, and the map floating next to her head and showing the end of the drawn line is just the cherry on top. There’s no visible locking mechanism, so Twilight just pushes her hoof into the indentation in the middle of the presumed door, spins it to move the expected bar on the other side, and slides it sideways along the rails, revealing a space so wide open that the light of her horn doesn’t reach anywhere far enough.

Pumping some more power into the light spell and wincing and the magic resists Twilight’s control, the glowing ball surrounding her horn feels less like, well, light and more physically heavy object made from white tentacles reaching out through liquid treacle. Other than that, however, the visibility increases and the light spell obeys her for now.

“Miss Gloom?” she says out loud but too careful to straight up shout.

No answer. With how much of a shining beacon she must be now, if Gloom was here she would likely have noticed.

Letting out a sigh caused by yet another minor setback, Twilight decides that since no one seems to be around, she may as well explore a little with only a low risk of interfering with the subjects prematurely. With the discovery of Silversmith writing, the idea of unintrusive and perhaps entirely unseen observation has gone out of the window.

In the strong light, she can see a black stone statue of a changeling with large sapphires for eyes. To her knowledge, changelings look very similar based on their ‘class’ and this statue, while too big, is shaped like the drones she met at the Embassy in Canterlot. There’s a small, smooth section on the front of the raised base of the statue reading ‘9999’ in standard pony script.

There are two more statues like that behind the first one, one on the left and one on the right. The right one stops existing for Twilight because she notices that the left one has its foreleg outstretched and its hoof transformed into claws in which it’s holding a…

“Is that… what is that…?” the alicorn immediately rushes over to examine the staff made from silvery white metal, the final third of which opens into a three-pronged holder containing a narrow, brown-red, flat-top pyramid shape that makes the hair on the back of Twilight’s neck stand up, “A Silversmith device?” she runs her hoof along the staff, “That’s istrium for sure, but what is the top part?”

Just for completion’s sake, she checks the description of this statue too, and it reads “36658, The Guide”. Rising up, she notices that the top part of the artefact seems to be drawing in the tendrils of her light spell and wrapping them around itself to no discernible effect.

“Anypony from the United Orders of Wizardry would kill for this, literally in most cases,” she breathes out, “I MUST examine it.”

Her telekinetic grasp takes hold of the staff and fades immediately.

“What?”

Before she can try again, however, she hears the door behind her move, followed by a quiet, squelching noise. Like a caught criminal, she turns around, only to see-

-black tentacles reaching out and dozens of teal eyes staring into the dark depths of her soul.

Twilight lets out a high-pitched screech of pure terror and, in the place where even thought-through and carefully controlled magic goes haywire, makes the mistake of reflexively teleporting away and immediately starts choking, immobilized and with the flow of air cut off by the cold touch of solid rock around her head.

Author's Note

I've been barely managing to finish the weekly updates in time recently so I'm not sure how the weekly schedule will continue. On top of that, it's the usual depressive season of the year when I remind myself into how much of a no-win situation my decisions led me, so the creativity is a bit stifled.
On the other hand, I'm still producing hug bugs, and that counts for something.